How Searching Online Transformed Us?

After yesterday's post and the comments, I thought more on the topic and tangential to it.

Most of the commenters on the post from yesterday thought it is likely AI search will likely become dominant in the next 5 years. I agree with them.

But since the time hasn't come yet, and since how they come out in their disruptive form will matter to us, I thought I should put together some more thoughts about both traditional and AI search.

Traditional Search

We should remember that before traditional search engines became mainstream, there was a different way of searching for information.

One that involved reading through written text mostly on paper support. Whether we talk about books, scientific articles, newspapers, laws or court decisions, etc. they were all or most of them on paper support and to research into a topic, someone had to read through a ton of them.

More employees doing this kind of work were around too.

Memory played an important role as that allowed us to be more efficient in our searches.

Source

Do you still remember the capitals of all the countries in the world? Well, I started to forget some. Luckily.

Not having search engines at the fingertips made people from less young generations on average more knowledgeable about things of interest to them (and in general) than youngsters are today.

That's a criticism raised against search engines. That they made people dumber because they no longer have strong elements of general knowledge, relying (almost) entirely on search engines to find all the answers they need.

This criticism makes at least partial sense. Separate a young person from his or her smartphone and you practically handicap him or her. That can certainly can feed theories that talk about smartphones being precursors to brain chip implants.

If we look at young (and not only young people) together with their smartphones, as a whole, where they may lack in general knowledge compared to someone older, they compensate by being able to quickly find answers through search engines or otherwise from their companion devices.

They know how to look for things and if they also have enough of a base to make the right connections between notions to be able to search for the right terms, that should be enough. If they are interested in a topic they might have that base.

AI Search

From this point of view, will AI search be another level deeper? Deeper into what? Into dependency. Actually, both dependency and addiction. Well, probably yes.

I already remarked in the previous section, how difficult it is to separate a youngster from his or her smartphone. For multiple reasons, but searching for things is definitely one of them.

With an AI search, it seems to me that people's disconnect from the base and relationships between information they are fed based on their questions will be greater. But we are far from seeing the actual effects.

A little science fiction distraction... Something that @mypathtofire reminded me of in yesterday's comments, indirectly... In all Star Trek series there was always a "Computer" (AI) which was generally able to help (or not) the crew in various circumstances. What is important to remind here and in this context, is that at least officers in Star Trek went to an Academy where they learned everything they needed to know about the ship, space, other races, etc. theoretically. They didn't have to ask an AI or a search engine how to do something, even if they sometimes did, but they already had the base. Fiction, yeah, but something of reference, and something people should reflect on.

There may be cases where AI search would really be better for aggregating sources from different places. One example would be if you ask a question in English, it should look for answers in all sources, regardless of the language, and auto-translate if it finds something useful in another language. Google wouldn't be able to do that since it's translate website is mediocre at best.

Final Words

Searching became much more efficient since search engines were introduced and a lot of the information has been transferred from paper to the internet. That's a given.

Does the convenience of search engines make us dumber?

I believe that argument is hard to make. Many became more dependent and even addicted to smartphones, for example, where search engines are at your fingertips wherever you go. They may be less generally knowledgeable but more knowledgeable in areas of interest. They should build their base in their domains of interest, despite of having access to technology that can tell them what they want to know quickly. But they need to know what to ask for. And what if they don't have access to this technology in certain circumstances?

However, the same technology allowed access to information to many more in the world who were deprived of it.

And those who want to build their own cultural and knowledge base, can still do it, and nobody stops them.

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